Tsukimi
by Kyoron
Summary: The letter D has meaning to Kimihiro. Debt and dreams. When they combine it creates something vaguely sad and heartwarming. Vague Watanuki x Doumeki shipping, cause it's canon to me.


She finds him sitting on the porch, little legs dangling off the edge as the moon looms high above. He looks older even though his tiny bare feet don't even touch the sand below.

She smiles and is happy and sorrowful that he didn't come to her first. But he is growing up, perhaps it is better that he finds his own way until he is ready to come back to her. Glancing up at the moon she thanks the encompassing gaze for watching over her baby boy before padding over to Kimihiro.

Scooping him up into her arms, he looks up at her in surprise and she smiles.

"Tell me about your dreams, Kimihiro."

He peers up at his mother, her soft hair tucked neatly behind her ear, shines beneath the moon.

It was another nightmare. They happen every night. He can see things, things that the other children can't see and it makes him isolated even with his dear parents.

They know about some of his dreams, the ones where he disappears, where he forgets all about his parents and their faces blur into blackness. He clutches at his mothers shirt, its white and makes her pale skin glow.

He shakes his head.

"You won't tell me?"

He purses his lips and hears her sigh. The wind rustles by. The Japanese maple twining up into the moon shivers. He wants to go inside, but his mother always sits on the porch at night just as the moon has climbed high into the sky. She says she wants to see every moon before it vanishes. He doesn't understand, once every month the moon slivers into black and she still kneels on the hard porch floor with him in her thin arms.

"It is alright, my Kimihiro." She smiles sweetly and hugs him closer. Her dark skirt bunches beneath his tiny legs. "We all have our secrets."

It does not make him happy to hear this and he buries his head into her chest tears prickling at his eyes.

She lifts his chin and dabs at the tears. Her fingers are so thin. He never will figure out how she always knows when he wants to cry.

"Do not shed your tears, Kimihiro. It hurts to see you cry."

"Why?"

She smiles and uses her sleeve to brush away the barely started water tracks on his cheeks. "Because I love you." She grins and tightly wraps her arms around him. "And you're too cute to cry!" She exclaims rubbing her face into his black hair.

"Okaa-san!"

She tilts her face away, her cheek resting on his head. "Hmph." Her lips purse. "Don't call me san, it makes me feel old."

He grins, nightmares stowed in the back of his mind. "But mommy is old!" He lilts out of his formal speech that his father had instilled into him. "She's like thirty!"

"Thirty is not old!"

Giggling he tugs on her blouse. "Is too!"

A feral grin slides onto her face and she props Kimihiro onto her shoulder before sliding into the house. She doesn't bother to shut the porch door.

"Well then, it seems like a young cheeky boy needs to go to bed now." Humming she slips into his room, spring colors dance around the walls.

Kimihiro pouts before he hears her giggle, "If Mommy is old, Daddy is ancient."

He squeals as she tickles his belly.

As she tucks him into his tiny bed in the middle of the room. It is dark save for the small window beside his bed allowing the moon to watch him.

"Kaa-chan?"

She kisses his forehead and nods.

"I'm still scared."

She takes his hand in hers and sits on the edge of his bed. "My Kimihiro, my brave Kimihiro, you do not have to fear dreams." The bed creaks gently as she sits and it causes him to lean around her lithe waist.

Nestling his head into the pile of pillows beneath him he stares at the unpainted ceiling. "Because they're not real?"

She laughs and he turns towards her. It doesn't sound right. "No, dreams can be very real." Her smile doesn't quite reach her big eyes. "There is much that can be feared in dreams, and I do not mean that there is no need to fear dreams."

He shivers and remembers black shadows coiling around the bed posts before he screamed.

"I know." He replies.

Her smile is rueful and for a second he believes she knows what he sees. But he shakes it away, he has told them before, the spirits that writhe around him, the slightly disjointed people that stare curiously at him when he catches their eyes. She always said it was alright and that all children saw these things once in a while. His father would say that bravery made them go away.

They were figments of a child's imagination the others would say.

"They are frightening, aren't they Kimihiro?" She brushes back his hair in the way that makes him look silly. She smiles when he shakes his head yes and it flings back over his brow. "But they are dreams, they have power and when you are in them, you have power."

He nods not quite following, but his mother's voice carries him slowly towards sleep. She always sang in a whisper and sighed in her voice.

"You can guide a dream, Kimihiro, if you know how." Kimihiro doesn't particularly like the look in her dark eyes. The glimmer of a bone white moon is not there. It reminds him too much like the shifting shadows.

"Do you know how, Obaa-san?"

"Mhmm."

She turns towards the window and it is the easy way she hums her answer that lulls Kimihiro's eyes shut. He feels her stand as his consciousness slips away. Her lingering warmth on the thick comforter lets him know he will have no more nightmares, at least until the next time he falls asleep.

Smoothing the blankets out as she turns to leave she smiles at her son. His chest rises and falls in the beginnings of sleep. He won't hear her now "You've grown up well, Kimihiro."

He dreams of shoji screens sliding shuts.

"Your parents always loved you-"

"-Watanuki."

Kimihiro stares at Doumeki, his large hands clasped over a broom handle with a little too much force. He smiles, and Doumeki's grip tightens.

"Good morning."

Doumeki's face twitches just so, and after years of being around the other man, Watanuki knows it is as much leeway as he will get. Calloused fists bunching thin cotton will come next.

"It is afternoon." Doumeki's voice is even and hard.

Looking up at the sun dipping lower Kimihiro nods. "It is."

For all of Doumeki's worries there is Kimihiro, he is the one who causes them all. "What did you dream of?"

Kimihiro balks just a little and lets his smile falter just so. "A memory."

He smiles when all Doumeki does is nod and take those large sure strides over the shop's wooden walkway.

"Sleep is for the night, we are cleaning now, idiot."

A smile quirks on Kimihiro's lips, it is peculiarly cute how the other worries, not that he'd ever admit it.

He makes a show of yelling and hissing at Doumeki and is glad that he only plugs his ears and holds out the worn broom, waiting.

It has been a long time since Yuuko had gone, but the small table stained with sake rings and sun streaks still sits on the porch until Summer. He always wondered why she stayed out so late sitting there with Maru and Moro. Her eyes were always trained at the moon with a sake cup balanced on long pale fingers.

His mother always went to sleep early, she had to work just as the sun broke over the horizon.

Taking the broom in hand he smiles at Doumeki. They both smile and the understanding that Kimihiro is alright sparks as their fingers brush past each other and Kimihiro takes the broom.

"I know," His grin falls away chidingly into a soft smile, "and don't call me an idiot." He wags his finger right in the other's face.

Doumeki smiles and goes back to dusting being careful of the spiderwebs hanging high above them. "Then stop being one."

"Stupid Doumeki."

He smiles.

"You owe me dinner, I want Tsukimi Soba."

He doesn't want to worry Doumeki, it isn't as amusing as he originally thought it would be, so he pouts and spits insults, "It's not autumn, Stupid!" but eventually agrees. He always does. But this time he know exactly why.

First, though, he carefully sweeps the walkway and porch.

Sometimes he doesn't mind being in debt.

"Thank you." Pushing past the stoic lug, Kimihiro gives a feline smirk.

He laughs at Doumeki's confused face and slips into the shop.

He's always gotten something in return.

A/N:

Tsukimi Soba is a Japanese dish that is eaten during moon viewing in mid-autumn, August 15th on the lunar calendar. Reason why I used it? I shamelessly add symbolism all~ the time. It's a bad habit.

Hope I didn't over explain things, I read this over a couple times and thought it was confusing, then I thought I was being too obvious, then I thought screw it.


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